This is the letter to PlansForUs Members…As for my blogging, please head over to www.youmeandmyapi.com where I will change gears and get cranking in April.
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Dear PlansForUs Members,
We started PlansForUs in November of 2006 with the idea that a platform for sharing knowledge and expediting collaboration between teachers would be the tool for solving the problem of teachers not having enough time to find and develop engaging lessons. We received plenty of great feedback, the most fundamentally correct and challenging being, PlansForUs is only useful if it doesn’t take any more of my precious time to use. This was our fundamental flaw, PlansForUs made an assumption around sharing content and while that assumption has borne out magnificently well for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and others, teachers are uniquely challenged to find the time to contribute. Unfortunately, I did not give my team enough of a runway to iterate our initial design and concept to solve this fundamental flaw in a way that would truly reflect your needs. As a result we did not generate the organic community growth needed to maintain the company.
Everyday I hear the stories of a teacher’s (my wife) triumphs and difficulties. Each time I hear a story I wish that I could capture it as a digital vignette to be shared so that other teachers could use these experiences to contextualize and solve their own challenges. The fact that teachers cannot actively engage and benefit from one another’s experiences is a huge frustration. My hope is that as more entrepreneurs build solutions to the challenges faced by educators, that they maintain a laser focus on business models that leverage and capitalize on a vibrant, participatory community of teachers. It is essential to focus on the teacher, so that we can outflank the traditional bureaucratic monetization routes that have crippled the integration of technology that actually benefits student education and teacher’s lives.
In the 21st century, no group of people is more important than teachers and I thank you for giving me an opportunity to build something to help you in your daily lives. While our team didn’t pull it off this time, please know that we will not forget your needs and we’ll work hard in the intervening years to muster the resources to pull it off on the next go around. As for the present, on March 31st we will shut the site down. I am considering hosting a Ning based social network in its place, but given the social network overload out there, I will only do so if there is sufficient demand from you.
This weekend I am going to be announcing some big changes with PlansForUs and the blog…in the meantime here is an absolutely ridiculous song that I have listened to 8 times since I picked it up this afternoon. I heard it while out shopping with my wife at Madewell and consequently have a very high opinion of Madewell.
Like many of you I have come into 2008 with some goals that I want to accomplish and things that I am going to change. One of those things is what happens with PlansForUs. I will publicize that decision at the end of the month when I am clear on exactly what I want to do.
The second of many is what to do with these posts that I have in draft form. They have been staring at me for awhile now. In order to start 2008 fresh I am going to do the following. I am listing all of these drafts below, if there is one that you would like me to publish, please let me know in the comments, otherwise I am going to dispose of them all and start anew in 2008. Here are the potential posts:
Don’t Listen to Doris Lessing-She’s Wrong!, Guinan’s Pub and YouTube are Connected?, Are you Surprised? Clarence is Already There, Organize through Networks, not Hierarchy, Right on Seth, except something doesn’t work for me, My Day at School, Signal vs Noise in Teaching, Recursion and what it means for PlansForUs, Young Entrepreneurs, Evangelism, Formatting, Are we right?, Losing Work-Are USBs, Floppy Disks and Multiple Machines Saving Time
By the way, this was post #100. Not quite as exciting as I hoped, but a milestone all the same.
On November 15, 2007 I made the following prediction-Obama v McCain would be the eventual matchup in the 2008 and with Obama winning in Iowa it seems I am a bit closer to being correct in my prediction. Now there is a lot of time left and things could change, but this is a big win for Obama and McCain is looking strong going into NH.
In other news:
-PlansForUs is going to be changing in a lot of significant ways in the next month, as we reappraise our strategy for 2008.
-The Chicago Bulls are down by 2 to Portland and I am nervous
-And this is the best song I have heard in awhile:
I watched this in today’s NY Times. I rarely click on these multimedia features, but this one was a spectacular photo and audio narrative of this terrible moment.
We are blessed to be living here in the United States, but as the world continues to converge, the need to be aware of events and consequences of those events around the world only increases in importance. While there is much gnashing of teeth over Iran, our biggest problem is what happens in Pakistan. The linkage between the US and Musharraf is doing us no good, I wonder what the plan to deal with that is…
I want to state for the record, that I really enjoy blogging. Though I can’t claim a huge readership base, I can claim that writing on this blog has done a whole lot of good for my clarity of writing. In fact, I haven’t felt that my writing has been as concise since my journal writing days traveling through Europe. So, to those who don’t blog-the reason I blog is to be a better writer in my everyday life.
Anyway, things have been extraordinarily busy and will remain so for the foreseeable future as I work through a bunch of different things in business and in life. I will post when I can, so definitely grab my RSS feed or email if you are one of my 30-40 average visitors.
Last week, we pitched NY Angels, which was pretty intense. While I would love to say that we knocked their socks off, I must admit that the outcome of that meeting is very unclear. I’ll obviously let you know if something comes of it. We have also been admitted into the Investors Circle newsletter and company database. Investors Circle is a group of about 400 angel investors who seek to make socially conscious angel investments, so we are hopeful on that front.
I have also been spending some time brainstorming with a buddy of mine from a past job, Steve Martocci. Steve is an incredibly vivid and innovative thinker and developer, who is using these skills to develop some exciting things with his company Sympact Technologies. Spending time with him, working to develop his strategy has had a terrific cross-pollinating effect on how I think about PlansForUs. You will see the fruits of that pollination in 2008.
Moving on-Do you read Dy/Dan yet? Are you an educator? Than you must have a look. Are you interested in the debate around technology in the classroom? Than you should be reading. Dan provides an incredibly honest assessment of teaching. His latest post talks of the benefits of a well designed worksheet, a skill which I see on a regularly honed by my wife. The honesty of Dan’s discourse and the clarity of thought is really powerful. Check it out.
Finally, What’s my worldview? I know, you are all fascinated to find out and that’s why I kept it for last. Lucky for you, I am going to share my worldview as analyzed by QuizFarm and Oxygen Media. Leave a comment and tell me what your worldview diagnosis.
Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis.
This weekend my wife and I were listening to a song from these guys as we drove out to Montauk and decided that it was absolutely awesome. We have now downloaded a few more songs from them and are anxiously awaiting their tour dates in NYC. I also think I am going to go ahead and buy more tracks from these guys on Amazon.
According to my iTunes I first found The Cave Singers exactly a month ago. The song that I discovered these guys with was “Seeds of Night”, a song which is actually one of the more beautiful songs I have heard and really highlights the singer’s unique voice.
That’s as far as I am going to go in describing the music as I have little expertise in moving my descriptions of music beyond the simple fact that I like the music. Here are a few songs that we like:
Seeds of Night
Dancing on our Graves
Helen
Oh Cristine
You can listen to many, if not all of them at HypeMachine.
Does anyone else have a problem with Facebook loading? I find that at least 50% of the time that I click on the links in a Facebook email, it doesn’t log me into the system. Don’t get me wrong, I am totally impressed by the growth of Facebook and business acumen of Zuckerberg and his advisers, but if your company has that many users and that much money, shouldn’t you get the page loading working?
I am in Facebook to explore and learn, I haven’t yet figured out why I love it. I know my brother, who is a senior in college is addicted, but I am still haven’t figured out what problem Facebook is solving for me. For now, I will stick with it and learn from the excellent UI and business execution. That said the only social network that remains truly interesting to me right now is LinkedIN.
Hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I had a really nice few days with my family in Chicago and also got the chance to meet with some interesting folks who I am looking forward to getting involved in PlansForUs.
In other news, we are in the middle of raising our seed round and thanks to the input on our presentation from this blog’s readers, we are getting a really nice response to our presentation from investors.
Here are a few things that I came across over the last few days and found interesting:
Jens Lekman-You Can Call Me Al
This is a superior cover of an already great song and has quickly become my wife’s favorite track. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.
Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig
How do you deal with issues of copyright in a world where information so freely moves about? It is a big question that we see grappled with rather inarticulately by the RIAA and Viacom among others. Mr. Lessig’s book is well worth a read for anyone, as it lays out the huge challenges faced by owners of intellectual property. A challenge that is fundamental though not unprecedented. Interestingly enough I am not getting bogged down as I have in the past with these types of books.
Tatebanko-
Not quite sure what this is, but in my search for creative Christmas gifts this popped up on the radar. Thoughts?
Connectivism: Learning as Network Creation by George Siemens
This has been around for awhile and as someone exploring Educational Technology I should probably not admit that I just got around to reading this, but that’s the case. Educational Technology and it’s advocates are a fascinating and passionate bunch who I have learned much from, though I do often cringe at the relentless pursuit of the new/new by these folks. Regardless, I had a favorite quote from the piece:
The tipping point occurs when the node itself has created a strong enough network to begin to influence the entire thought process (neural network). Once it is no longer a rogue node, it continues to embed itself as node that is used by the rest of the network.
I’ll let you read the piece to place the quote in context.
Last week I posted a presentation that I had been working on for awhile and asked for your feedback on how it might be improved. Thanks to my partner Steve, friends, family and the vibrant NextNY Community, I got that feedback. This presentation is still kicking around among a few friends and colleagues and I look forward to integrating their feedback, but in the meantime I wanted to show you the improved presentation. I am thinking of adding my notes into the comments section for each slide, but I am not too keen on adding an audio track. If you have any opinion on either the notes or the audio track, please let me know.
I just want to throw out an electoral prediction based on nothing more than my new found enthusiasm for Barack and an interesting editorial from David Brooks.
The November 2008 election is going to be….. Obama v McCain
This ballot presents all sorts of interesting generational differences, beyond just the obvious policy differences. We will just have to see if I am right. Put your prediction in now in the comments, if you get it right, I’ll send you the book I am reading at the time…lucky you.
I know that I still haven’t answered my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Teacher’s Needs question, nor have I posted the updated presentation. The presentation should be up by the end of the week. The hierarchy of needs may take a little bit longer.
I read a post in VentureBeat today. It is entitled “Exclusive: Barack Obama to name a Chief Technology Officer.” I know, I know the title is riveting.
OK, back to it. First off, I am not a member of One Million Strong for Barack. Also, I am pretty sure that I am going to keep my political opinions to myself in this polarized age, since my views liberal/conservative/independent don’t offer a whole lot of upside to PlansForUs.
Here is the statement to help set-up the whole discussion:
The CTO’s mandate would be quite different from the Cybersecurity czar appointed under the Bush Administration. Bush’s czar helped defend against cyberattacks. Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials holds open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.
This is just fascinating.
I. OPEN GOVERNMENT
He wants Cabinet officials, government executives and rulemaking agencies to hold meeting that are open to the public and transmitted with a live feed. The CTO’s mandate will be to ensure this happens. Specifically, Obama wants the public to be able to comment on the White House website for five days before legislation is signed.
Look, I don’t know if this going to just be edited crap and it ends up as a PR stunt, but the notion is really fascinating. What happens when you link this data dump with the media amplifiers or data management software, you could have some really interesting stuff come out of this. With filtering technologies, we could all become Tim Russert (for better or for worse) as we search the government data dump for inconsistencies. Even more interesting, how does freeing this information effect accountability and transparency? Is there a historical precedent?
The one policy that is stupid is the Privacy policy, but I guess every candidate has to have a position to save our children from the pandora’s box of content that the Internet has unleashed.
Obama is a pretty interesting dude and his message definitely resonates. Looking forward to the next few months of the campaigns. What are your thoughts?
I like these quick hits because they give me a chance to clear my mind and share something that is not directly related to the daunting work of getting PlansForUs off the ground. No one really tells you how hard it’s going to be, but man, there are just a litany of issues, particularly as a 1st timer.
Anyway, last night my beautiful wife and I made a great dinner, albeit an utterly gluttonous one, that had us both staring blankly by the end. This is a rarity at our home, because there is a lot of great take out in Union Square and most importantly…we don’t have a dishwasher. So without further ado here is our meal from last night.
Garlic and Olive Oil Smashed Potatoes-Really good, easy, fresh potatoes. With that said it took us about 20-25 minutes to get our potatoes properly tender.
Roasted Brussels Sprouts-These are just ridiculous. We have them all the time, they are easy and so good it is astounding. Also, it ends up that they are really good for you. A bonus.
Burgers-I am from the Midwest, so it is rare that a meal goes by without it including some sort of meat. As you can see, this meal was consistent with that theme.
Berger Blauer Zweigelt 2006-This wine is cheap and good. The linked review does a better job of describing the flavors. I can just tell you that my wife and I enjoyed it very much. A bonus feature to this wine is that they use a bottle cap to “cork” the wine. Really kind of awesome.
There is a question going around the NextNY forums about blogs as labors of love…I will admit that this blog is absolutely a labor of love. That said I would always love to hear from my readers, it makes me feel awesome to see a comment in the morning, or to see a new reader on my Feedburner or MyBlogLog.
Enjoy the weekend, I’ll be seeing a near complete look at our new PlansForUs wireframe design, which will really improve our user experience. Looking forward to it.
Quick Hits, is a way to blast out a couple of recommendations music, books, food, movies or otherwise. Hope you enjoy.
I am currently in the midst of reading three books. I will admit that the reason I am reading three is because at least two require a great deal of concentration and subsequently I am resigned to reading those two on the weekends, when I have more energy and time.
On Intelligence-Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakesee
I figure by better understanding the natural inclinations of the brain, I can improve how I think about executing the functions of PlansForUs. Perhaps we get a natural viral boost if we model our systems on human biology. I have no idea, but this book is not a bad place to start that line of inquiry. Jeff also was the founder of Palm and Handspring, so there are some interesting insights into the brain of an entrepreneur.
An exhaustive biography of a very influential man. In the age before entrepreneurship really blossomed, it would seem that Einstein had the make up of an entrepreneur. He had the ego, energy and intelligence and it is interesting to chart his path. This book is exhaustive and consequently has been slow going…however Einstein is a fascinating character.
We have owned this book for some time and my wife thoroughly enjoyed it. I began the book this week as a consequence of the following two events. On Intelligence and Einstein were killing me and my wife told me that the movie for the Kite Runner was coming out soon. It is a great book and I am enjoying it thoroughly.
I hope you enjoyed the first installment of quick hits.
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